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Wall Street and the Financial Crisis-Anatomy of a Financial Collapse
Yesterday the United States Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Carl Levin and minority member, Tom Coburn, released a 650 page document entitled Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse. In short, the document firmly lays the blame for the financial collapse of mortgage markets worldwide and the resulting onset of the Great Recession on hubris. Shocking! My very first post on this blog back in 2008 was entitled, “The ‘Financial Crisis’ is Really an Ethical...
read moreOur Culture of Lying, Deutsche Bank Style
For several years now I have decried the slow slip sliding away of ethics in American culture. At its core, capitalism relies upon trust on the part of both buyer and seller. Sans trust the transaction either doesn’t happen, or the price of the transaction is much higher. When businesses do things that are untrustworthy, and get away with it, they raise the cost of doing business for everyone. This is one of the principle reasons that I have found myself in the awkward position of being both a fan of, yet a critic of capitalism. At...
read moreInvesting Lessons From Da Vinci and Edison, part two
Here is part two of my interview with Michael J. Gelb, expert about both Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas A. Edison… Although Leonardo’s principles are profoundly relevant for the development of human potential and organizational creativity the Maestro was concerned with pure truth, beauty and goodness, whereas Edison was more focused on applying creativity to generate wealth. Edison noted, “ Anything that won’t sell I don’t want to invent. Sales are proof of utility and utility is success.” JAV: What are the Edison principles and which...
read moreInvesting Lessons From Da Vinci and Edison
As I discuss in my book The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth in my almost two decades as a successful investor I have discovered that the most important investing skill is: understanding information. This is because information is the basis for investment evaluation and investment decisions. Understanding information well equips investors to recognize when they don’t have enough information; to rapidly sift through unimportant information; to see what other investors miss; to more artfully respond to crisis or panic...
read moreEuropean Central Bank Raises Interest Rates
Europe’s Central Bank – the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Reserve – announced that it was raising interest rates from 1.0% to 1.25%. This is the first rise in interest rates by the ECB since July 2008. Analysis: For me, this is a very clear indication that, at the worldwide political level, the Great Recession is over. That worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) is on a strong footing. Only in the situation in which a government was extremely comfortable that its economy was stable could it raise the price of...
read moreApple’s Monopolistic Behavior
I just bought a brand new iPod Classic 160GB because I had completely filled up my old 80GB one with music. I am a big fan of the iPod because I am a big fan of having my immodest music collection with me wherever I may be. So I plugged my new iPod into my computer to register the product to activate my warranty coverage. So imagine my horror when, instead of being taken to a product registration page, I was taken to the iTunes Store. Devilishly, the iTunes Store refused to let me pass to the next screen until I provided my full...
read moreWhat About Gold Right NOW?
Loyal blog reader, Clint, asked a question yesterday about my 2011 Prediction for gold prices that I feel needs to be brought into the larger forum of the blog itself. Here is what Clint asked: “Hello Jason I have a question about your gold prediction. With the fed printing money faster than I can say “the fed is printing money”, rising turmoil in the middle east (although not new), another war, and not too dramatic increase in job creation, do you still see a major sell of in gold within this year? Thanks Peace Clint”...
read moreStatistics Are Not the Truth, Just a Mathematical Method
One of my continual beefs with our Western World and my criticisms of capitalism is our overemphasis on numerical and statistical methods in analysis. In fact, these two forms of analysis are so dominate that the word analysis has become a synonym for numerical and statistical methods. In conducting analysis as an investor for almost twenty years I can tell you that analysis requires equal parts left brain and right brain. This is the very reason that I wrote my book The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth. Namely, I...
read more4 April 2011: Barron’s Reviews The Intuitive Investor!
This morning I received news that Barron’s, that scion of the investment world, has reviewed The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth. While I consider the review to be only slightly positive, I am grateful to Gene Epstein and Michael Santoli of Barron’s for selecting my book for review. Purportedly they receive up to 3,000 submissions per year, and to be reviewed at all makes me feel very humbled. Thank you. To read the review requires a Barron’s subscription, so instead of just providing you...
read moreJobs Created, Unemployment Rate Down
Department of Labor data for March shows that the U.S. economy created 216,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate fell to 8.8%. This compares to expectations by economists of 195,000 jobs created and no change in the 8.9% unemployment rate. Analysis: The theme on the blog this week has been the various economic data that are beginning to create an image of a recovered economy. From the increase in consumer incomes and spending, to the ADP jobs created survey showing 201,000 private sector jobs created, to jobless claims remaining...
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